Comica is a comic downloader and viewer that utilises a custom-built framework for the parsing and downloading of comics from websites. The framework uses an open XML format that allows anyone to add support for additional comics.
There is full support for comic archiving and browsing. If archiving is enabled (within the Settings window), Comica will archive any downloaded comics.

This post is to let everyone know what's happening with Comica. Specifically, its future.

There's Good News and Meh News.

The Good News

The Good News is that Comica 2.00 is being actively worked upon. A few years late, admittedly, but it's finally getting done. Again.

The existing 1.xx code base is a maintenance nightmare for a few reasons.

The codebase is a mess. This is due in part to point 3 below, and that I've evolved my coding style over the past few years that I tend to do things differently now. In addition, I'm using the latest .NET version (4.7.2 at the time of writing) and so taking advantage of its new(er) features. Targetting the newer framework versions were generally problematic due to point 2 below.

Upgrading the codebase to support the new versions of the .NET framework typically resulted in weird errors and problems that I couldn't really work out. I don't know if this is because of the separate projects Comica was split into, or what. Getting error reports saying that methods didn't exist within assemblies made no sense as they were all built and released together.

I was part-way through a huge rewrite of Comica when I (inadvertently) ceased development on it. Working out what's what and what should be done next was almost impossible.

I need to work on projects that provide an income. More on this below.

Due to the reasons above, I decided that binning off Comica 1.xx and working on its sequel would probably be the better idea.

The Meh News

Due to the 4th point above, development on Comica 2 won't be quick as I still need to work on projects that provide some kind of income. I used to create and release lots of freeware and rely on donations but two decades has shown that it doesn't really work. D'oh.

What Now?

I'm currently creating the interface for Comica 2, along with rewriting the Comics framework that powers the core of it. There's an issue tracker available that has tasks on what to do next should anyone be interested.

Please use this thread to let me know if there's any specific features or requests you'd like to be in Comica 2.